A 'Godsend' on Fourth Street: Olympia's Mothers Furnish a Room to Keep the Boys Out of the Saloons
In a hard-times autumn, the women's auxiliary of the new Young Men's Christian Association canvassed the town for chairs, papers and games — and promised the doors at 406 Fourth Street would open December 1.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The rooms of the Olympia Young Men's Christian Association, at 406 Fourth street, will be thrown open to the public December 1, one week from tomorrow. It will take fully a week to get everything in place. Meanwhile, the ladies comprising the auxiliary of the association will decorate and furnish the rooms, so that visitors will not be disappointed when they call.
Saturday afternoon there was an informal meeting of the auxiliary at the residence of Mrs. G. L. Sickels to discuss the situation and form plans for helping the association to get fairly started. It was decided to appoint a special committee to have charge of this special work. Mrs. S. Musgrove is chairman of this committee. She will be assisted by Mrs. G. L. Sickels, Mrs. M. L. Burntrager, Mrs. R. F. Whitham, Mrs. H. C. Clark, Mrs. H. M. Barry, Mrs. T. C. West, Mrs. George Savidge, Mrs. Allen Weir, Mrs. G. Revelon, Mrs. Frank Tillotson, Mrs. G. R. O'Brien and Miss Gertrude Kellogg.
The ladies will meet at the association headquarters tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 o'clock to arrange the details of the canvass that will be made during the week for the variety of articles needed to furnish and decorate the rooms.
It is quite probable that the ladies of the auxiliary will tender a reception to the young men of the association on the night of the opening.
In spite of the "hard times" in Olympia all business men approached about association finances have signified a willingness to make good subscriptions when they are satisfied that the young men really mean business.
"I have a boy," said a prominent gentleman, "and I feel that I am doing the best I can for his welfare when I support an institution of this kind. My boy is beginning to feel too big to stay at home of an evening. I will not let him go down town after night — there is no place where he can pass his time without visiting the saloons. A nice, cosy suite of rooms, with papers, games and pleasant company, all under Christian management, would be a Godsend to the young men of Olympia."
A lady, a member of the auxiliary, expressed a common feeling among mothers when she said: "While I am a member of the church and think it should be given our best efforts, I feel that we should combine for a short time and work with might and main until the Young Men's Christian association is well established. I have a boy and I feel that in a few years he will be beyond my control. When that time arrives I want to know that there is at least one institution in Olympia that will help him to be a true man."
Business men and anxious mothers and fathers may rest assured that the association will soon be an aggressive power for good in Olympia. The general secretary will make an especial effort to care for the boys who want to go "down town at night."
“"I will not let him go down town after night — there is no place where he can pass his time without visiting the saloons."”
Olympia's answer to a restless Saturday night downtown was a furnished parlor with newspapers and games, paid for by a women's committee that raised the money itself. A century and a half later, the same argument runs through Fourth Avenue: what is there downtown for a teenager to do after dark that isn't a bar, and who pays for it? The 'hard times' invoked here — the depression winter of 1891 — also reminds us that civic amenity and economic anxiety have always arrived together.
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